5 ms·

The goalposts are moving so fast they're red-shifting.

scott_w 3y ago
That’s not really an issue when we’re talking about AI. I said in a separate comment on the topic: intelligence is such a complicated thing that we seem to only be able to define it by pointing to things and saying “that’s not it.” If we didn’t move the goalposts, we’d have declared Stockfish to be full AI, despite it only being a chess-playing program, long ago.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  Except in a few years you may realize it was "it" all along.
  - scott_w 3y ago
    Perhaps but I’m pretty confident a ChatGPT is not “it” this time.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Sortie's Paradox.
      - scott_w 3y ago
        My confidence comes from watching GothamChess play it at… chess. The problem with ChatGPT isn’t that it’s bad at chess or doesn’t understand the rules of the game. It obviously has no concept of what it’s doing. It can’t even keep track of which pieces are still on the board: a trivial task for even a small child.
        pixl97 3y ago
        Small children track in their 'minds eye' the entire layout of a chess board and where each piece is? Tokenization starts screwing stuff up if you're start printing out a board after each move. Push out a plugin that sets up a virtual board GPT-4 can read after each move and see if its any better.
        scott_w 3y ago
        No, they look at the board, though strong chess players can do it blindfolded. My point is that the hyperbole about “we’ve cracked AI but they changed the goalposts” is self evidently not true. You just proved it right there: I need to add more plugins because ChatGPT does not understand what it’s doing. It’s a potentially useful tool but that doesn’t make it intelligent.
        pixl97 3y ago
        I mean, all you've managed to state is that gpt isn't a strong AGI, not that it isn't intelligent. Stop thinking of intelligence as a binary option of 'is or !is' and more of a capability gradient. Being able to properly use tools is a sign of intelligence in of itself.
        scott_w 3y ago
        I’m using “intelligent” in the “intelligent life” meaning, not the “how intelligent is this person” meaning. By this meaning, any reasonable person would realise it’s not crossing that threshold. Where is this threshold? I don’t think anyone really knows yet. That’s why I don’t see a problem with “moving the goalposts,” because doing so is the best way to help us truly understand what it means to be an intelligent life form (artificial or otherwise).
        pixl97 3y ago
        And this is why the word intelligent is useless. In your use of the word we're not getting anywhere then suddenly terminator kicks in the door and steps on your head and then "Oh, yea, I guess we reached the intelligent point". This is a piss poor predictor of capabilities. And again "reasonable" is a pretty useless metric. Asking a 'reasonable' person about any system that requires expert knowledge to understand is going to derive an unreasonable answer. This is because they'll conflate intelligence with human behavior.
- marcusverus 3y ago
  We agreed on a definition of artificial intelligence--the Turing test--for 50 years. The goalpost was clearly established, widely agreed upon, and promptly abandoned when chatbots blew past it. I'm convinced that when the dust has settled and historians look back to decide on THE point in time at which we achieved AI or even AGI, that time will not be in the future, but in the past.
  - scott_w 3y ago
    The fact it was defined a long time ago isn’t good enough. If, upon passing the test, you realise the test was insufficient, you change the test. You don’t shrug your shoulders and go “well it must be right because a guy said so 50 years ago!”
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > We agreed on a definition of artificial intelligence–the Turing test–for 50 years. No, we didn’t. There was plenty of disagreement over it. Heck, the Chinese Room is very popular rejection fundamentally of the premise of it. That aside, even if in a blind scenario (where the builders didn’t know the criteria used to test) being able to fool humans in linguistic interaction would be reasonably likely to be a good test of general intelligence, LLM’s are about as an obvious of a direct and deliberate attempt to Goodhart’s Law the Turing Test as one could imagine. Using a particular capacity to test a more general capacity is obviously vulnerable to systems built to specialize in the tested capacity, as opposed to those that have it as a consequence of general ability.
  - JimtheCoder 3y ago
    "I'm convinced that when the dust has settled and historians look back to decide on THE point in time at which we achieved AI or even AGI, that time will not be in the future, but in the past." If historians are looking back to decide the point, by definition doesn't it have to be in the past? Historians looking back to the future doesn't make sense...
    - epylar 3y ago
      Historians in 2050 could look back at 2040, which would be their past but our future.
chongli 3y ago
The whole history of AI debates seems to be an exercise in goalpost-moving. Whether it's AI proponents or skeptics, no one can seem to agree on a stable benchmark. Personally, I think it's due to intelligence itself being ill-defined as a concept. How are we supposed to build something when we don't even agree on what it is we're trying to build?

That’s not really an issue when we’re talking about AI. I said in a separate comment on the topic: intelligence is such a complicated thing that we seem to only be able to define it by pointing to things and saying “that’s not it.” If we didn’t move the goalposts, we’d have declared Stockfish to be full AI, despite it only being a chess-playing program, long ago.

lostmsu 3y ago
Except in a few years you may realize it was "it" all along.
- scott_w 3y ago
  Perhaps but I’m pretty confident a ChatGPT is not “it” this time.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Sortie's Paradox.
    - scott_w 3y ago
      My confidence comes from watching GothamChess play it at… chess. The problem with ChatGPT isn’t that it’s bad at chess or doesn’t understand the rules of the game. It obviously has no concept of what it’s doing. It can’t even keep track of which pieces are still on the board: a trivial task for even a small child.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Small children track in their 'minds eye' the entire layout of a chess board and where each piece is? Tokenization starts screwing stuff up if you're start printing out a board after each move. Push out a plugin that sets up a virtual board GPT-4 can read after each move and see if its any better.
        scott_w 3y ago
        No, they look at the board, though strong chess players can do it blindfolded. My point is that the hyperbole about “we’ve cracked AI but they changed the goalposts” is self evidently not true. You just proved it right there: I need to add more plugins because ChatGPT does not understand what it’s doing. It’s a potentially useful tool but that doesn’t make it intelligent.
        pixl97 3y ago
        I mean, all you've managed to state is that gpt isn't a strong AGI, not that it isn't intelligent. Stop thinking of intelligence as a binary option of 'is or !is' and more of a capability gradient. Being able to properly use tools is a sign of intelligence in of itself.
        scott_w 3y ago
        I’m using “intelligent” in the “intelligent life” meaning, not the “how intelligent is this person” meaning. By this meaning, any reasonable person would realise it’s not crossing that threshold. Where is this threshold? I don’t think anyone really knows yet. That’s why I don’t see a problem with “moving the goalposts,” because doing so is the best way to help us truly understand what it means to be an intelligent life form (artificial or otherwise).
        pixl97 3y ago
        And this is why the word intelligent is useless. In your use of the word we're not getting anywhere then suddenly terminator kicks in the door and steps on your head and then "Oh, yea, I guess we reached the intelligent point". This is a piss poor predictor of capabilities. And again "reasonable" is a pretty useless metric. Asking a 'reasonable' person about any system that requires expert knowledge to understand is going to derive an unreasonable answer. This is because they'll conflate intelligence with human behavior.
marcusverus 3y ago
We agreed on a definition of artificial intelligence--the Turing test--for 50 years. The goalpost was clearly established, widely agreed upon, and promptly abandoned when chatbots blew past it. I'm convinced that when the dust has settled and historians look back to decide on THE point in time at which we achieved AI or even AGI, that time will not be in the future, but in the past.
- scott_w 3y ago
  The fact it was defined a long time ago isn’t good enough. If, upon passing the test, you realise the test was insufficient, you change the test. You don’t shrug your shoulders and go “well it must be right because a guy said so 50 years ago!”
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > We agreed on a definition of artificial intelligence–the Turing test–for 50 years. No, we didn’t. There was plenty of disagreement over it. Heck, the Chinese Room is very popular rejection fundamentally of the premise of it. That aside, even if in a blind scenario (where the builders didn’t know the criteria used to test) being able to fool humans in linguistic interaction would be reasonably likely to be a good test of general intelligence, LLM’s are about as an obvious of a direct and deliberate attempt to Goodhart’s Law the Turing Test as one could imagine. Using a particular capacity to test a more general capacity is obviously vulnerable to systems built to specialize in the tested capacity, as opposed to those that have it as a consequence of general ability.
- JimtheCoder 3y ago
  "I'm convinced that when the dust has settled and historians look back to decide on THE point in time at which we achieved AI or even AGI, that time will not be in the future, but in the past." If historians are looking back to decide the point, by definition doesn't it have to be in the past? Historians looking back to the future doesn't make sense...
  - epylar 3y ago
    Historians in 2050 could look back at 2040, which would be their past but our future.

chongli 3y ago

The whole history of AI debates seems to be an exercise in goalpost-moving. Whether it's AI proponents or skeptics, no one can seem to agree on a stable benchmark. Personally, I think it's due to intelligence itself being ill-defined as a concept. How are we supposed to build something when we don't even agree on what it is we're trying to build?